The Unauthorized History of the American Conference for Irish Studies

THE UNAUTHORIZED HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CONFERENCE FOR IRISH STUDIES [PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS OMNIA HIBERNICA: HOW THE ACIS BROUGHT IRISH STUDIES TO THE ACADEMY] JAMES MacKILLOP ACIS PRESIDENT, 1995-97 1 The Unauthorized History of the American Conference for Irish Studies, Or, of the ACIS Brought Irish Studies to the Academy Table of Contents Introduction Acknowledgements Chapter 1 Origins, Definitions, Beginning Chapter 2 Annual Conference & Related Organizations Chapter 3 The Curriculum: Irish Studies as a Day Job Chapter 4 Publications: How the ACIS Helped Irish Studies Get Into Print Chapter 5 Topics We Talked About and How They Changed Appendix 1 Presidents Appendix 2 National Conferences Appendix 3 Notable Books By ACIS Members Appendix 4 Works Cited and Consulted 2 INTRODUCTION Despite my having accepted the commission to assemble this account, it is primarily a labor of love. The ACIS has been my guild, my fraternity for forty-four years, since I first heard the late Bernie Benstock talk about Finnegans Wake in Cortland, May 1, 1968. Attending the annual meeting has been a priority ever since, although I did not make every one. The annual conference has been an on-going, moveably intellectual feast, influencing and shaping my understanding of important issues and persons, from Newgrange to Neil Jordan. I was present when many events described here took place, and in a few I was a player. In a preliminary draft I felt as though I was writing a memoir, except that I had not been everywhere. Retained from that discarded approach are the informal tone and the lack of specific documentation. My model was an article in the New Yorker rather than one in Éire-Ireland or New Hibernia Review. Some moments and some interpretations I know to be accurate, even if they cannot be documented. I also hoped such a tone might invite more readers. Nonetheless, the Works Cited lists nearly 170 items referenced or consulted. For a while I thought the history of the ACIS should be an iteration of the national and regional meetings, emphasizing the brilliant, hilarious or outrageous things said in sessions or corridors. Soon it became clear that some of the best anecdotes were apocryphal, or it was arguable who said them. Further, I had not heard all of them, and it was impossible to rank them. Eventually, I had to recognize one had to be there to appreciate them and reading several pages of such accounts could be wearying for the newcomer. Nearly all those darlings were murdered. More costly in the time of the author was the failed attempt to make Chapters 2-5 chronological, as Chapter 1 is. When the ACIS grew to a large and dispersed membership, events on the program turned out not to be coordinated with the fight to develop new courses and programs, or with failed attempts at a journal and annual. Running on different tracks also were responses to the crises in Ulster, the embrace of academic feminism, or the development of the study of Irish America and Irish- American literature. Out of this evolved the organization the reader finds here. History subsists on omission. I am regretful that I am using a tiny fraction of the material stockpiled in my office, and an even tinier fraction of what’s available in the ACIS Archive in Burns Library of Boston College. Too many people who served generously in offices, hosted conferences and just made things go are not mentioned. This would be a much, much longer book if they were. On the other hand, I am delighted at some news I do not have to report. No officer was ever forced from office for misuse of funds. None suffered public humiliation, as happened in a sibling organization (see Chapter 2). For an outfit that has embraced thousands of members over fifty years, there have been relatively few disputes, either personal or political. Their damage was minimal and did not hamper the progress of the whole. After fifty years we can see that the goal of the founders, to bring Irish studies to American academia, has been richly achieved. Our courses are now offered widely. Our books have been 3 published. The spirit of inquiry into every aspect of Irish history and culture—later Irish-American history and culture—omnia hibernica —has been vigorously encouraged. It has been an honor to be the chronicler, president and member of the American Conference for Irish Studies. James MacKillop Syracuse, NY May 1, 2012 Addendum. The 57,000-word commissioned history you have here, submitted in May, 2012, was rejected by the ACIS executive in January, 2013. No objection was made to imputed factual errors. The fault was in the tone, judged to be “glib” and “sarcastic.” After that judgment this text was retitled The Unauthorized History. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The ACIS Executive, 2005-2007, John P. Harrington, President, generously granted the honorarium that made this quest possible. Without their blessings nothing would have happened. Many thanks to the Burns Library of Boston College, keepers of the ACIS Archive, under the direction of David E. Horn, who have so much of what we need to know. BC Dean and friend Thomas Hachey provided valuable liaison. And students Justine Sundarum and Benjamin Killips gave matchless logistical assistance. Robert G. Lowery provided a complete run of the Newsletter early on. The late Emmet Larkin shared papers from his personal files. Larkin and co-founder Lawrence J. McCaffrey filled me on things not written down during several productive days in Chicago. Especially forthcoming were such colleagues as: James E. Doan, James E. Donnelly, Jr., Audrey Ey1ler, Thomas Hachey, Robert G. Lowery, Maureen O’Rourke Murphy, Cóilín Owens, Robert E. Rhodes, Catherine B. Shannon, Alan J. Ward. Thanks also to people who answered specific questions about recondite information: Jean Brihault, Richard Fallis, Charles Fanning, Hedda Fridberg, Francis W. Lovell, Robert McMahon, Jerry White The Unauthorized History of the American Conference for Irish Studies Previously Titled: [Omnia Hibernica: How the ACIS Brought Irish Studies to the Academy ] 5 Chapter 1 ORIGINS, DEFINITIONS, BEGINNINGS In any history of Irish Americana, 1961 leaps out as an annus mirabilis. On January 20 of that year, the United States inaugurated as president the child of immigrants from Wexford and Cork. Not just someone whose family had emigrated from Ireland, like Andrew Jackson or William McKinley, but an offspring of the formerly oppressed native stock. John F. Kennedy, the second son of a millionaire ambassador to the Court of St. James, walked and talked like a Boston Brahmin. But he wanted all citizens to know that he was a fíor-ghael , a true Irishman. The Kennedy ascendancy did not change social history as much as it announced subterranean transformations that were already taking place. Two centuries of social experience that gave us such colloquialism as “thick Mick,””paddy wagon” and “old biddy,” had pretty well come to a close. For a new generation Irishness was not a burden but a choice. Anyone, fíor-ghael or not, who chose to know about Irishness in 1961 had to be an autodidact and a determined one at that. The history curriculum of the time so marginalized Ireland, placing it a bit ahead of Albania or Latvia, that a university student would be fortunate to have read one paragraph on the Famine in progress toward a baccalaureate degree. Celtic, or “Seltic,” was the name of a basketball team, and most students would be unaware that the ancient Irish language boasted an extensive, artistically complex literature. The esteemed modernists, William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, enjoyed academic acclaim and were often assigned reading for students, but usually shorn of their Irish settling. In the Norton Anthology of that time the monarch of Yeats’s “Madness of King Goll” was glossed unhelpfully as a “minor eighth century Ulster king.” That Goll bore an unmistakable resemblance to Suibhne Geilt, “Mad Sweeney,” was deemed either unknowable or not worth pursuing. 6 To pursue self-instruction in Irish history or literature in 1961 called for tenacity and inventiveness, virtues often unrewarded by recognition. Most metropolitan and university libraries shelved few Irish books, and those that could be found were not always reliable. A common item was Seumas MacManus’s romantic nationalist The Story of the Irish Race (1921), which asserted credulously that Fionn mac Cumhaill was an historical personage of the third century. Travel to one of the dozen or so major libraries in North America, or a special collection like that of the American Irish Historical Institute, could be rewarding, but most aspiring scholars needed to maintain accounts with Irish booksellers like Hodges, Figgis or Brown & Nolan. Short scholarly articles were difficult to place, often having to horn their way into journals devoted to British history and literature or in Catholic publications, not an ideal forum for discussing Sean O’Casey. The academic labor market still favored the job seeker at that time, but the recent doctoral student with a dissertation in Irish history or literature often found him- or herself at a disadvantage when competing with applicants who had written on English or American topics. How was such a person to use his or her expertise in the classroom? If the young scholar persisted, there was some question whether a published monograph on Robert Emmet or Liam O’Flaherty was a strong asset in arguing for tenure or promotion. Yet one did not have to have a wet finger in the wind to feel that change was imminent. Post- War prosperity had fostered an unprecedented expansion of campus facilities with thousands upon thousands of new buildings and hundreds of completely new campuses.

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